I’m honestly shocked at how much lower in price AMD desktop processors are compared to Intel these days. Considering a quad-core from AMD starts at $90 and Intel at $180, you can easily see why so many PC builders choose to go with AMD as their CPU of choice. But are AMD processors any good? Of course they are. Just take a look at some of the reviews for...

The ATI brand name is no more. Gone. See ya. Buh-bye. It’s been replaced with Radeon and FirePro. This is one of those instances where the company who owns the brand (AMD) thinks changing the name is a good idea. For those of you who build PCs and favor the ATI brand, future purchases will require you to know that the name ATI will soon no longer exist for...

Last Friday I went to configure my father’s new PC, a Dell Inspiron 531 mini-tower. This is Dell’s lowest-priced offering and it’s as basic as basic can get. A box with Windows XP, mouse, keyboard, power cable and not much else. This box comes provided with a 1.6GHz single core AMD Athlon 2560e 512K, your option of Vista or XP (the chosen OS...

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago. In this installment we’ll be looking at something everyone has in their...

Barebones PCs are computers that takes a good chunk of the build process out. The box comes delivered completely assembled but you must put in your own supported processor, RAM, hard drive and possibly video card (some have built-in video on-board.) If you’re looking for a box that has absolutely no “influence” from Microsoft, Apple or large...

AMD has started production of a 1GHz Athlon processor this week, with a 1.4Ghz version being made in the middle of Y2K. How has AMD suddenly jumped from being 100-50MHz slower than the fastest Intel processors, to being faster than Intel? Maybe it’s the new .18u technology. Maybe it’s the design of...

Here is a story most people wouldn’t want to touch with a thirty meter pole. AMD has been stealing (not legally, just morally) Intel’s CPU design ever since the 286 days. I even have an AMD 286 on my key-chain. Back in the day, it didn’t matter which company made your big bad 286-12MHz CPU,...